The Biathlon23 Awards 2013/14!

Second only to the Oscars for drama and excitement the most highly anticipated awards of the year are here! In traditional biathlon23 style they are not exactly the standard awards you might have come to expect. I have decided not to bore you too much with the nominees and sometimes just go directly to the winners and the reasons why they won.Congratulations everyone for a great biathlon season 2013/14!!!

Most hits on the blog (so most popular): She is much more popular with the fans than the New Zealand Winter Olympic selection committee(those dream ruining fiends!) with 426 hits and counting for Hurricane Murphy and crushing the likes of Fourcade, Svendsen, Bjoerndalen, Berger, Domracheva and Makarainen!Winner: The lovely Miss Sarah Murphy.

Best Facial hair: Brendan Green came close with his moustache(eh..no he didn’t!!)but with a beautiful full beard giving Santa a run for his money(even though he shaved it off!).Winner: Simon Fourcade
Best name: I am a fan of Rastorgujevs (because it has a nice flow!). I also like Amanda Lightfoot(you need a light foot for skiing!), Leif Nordgren(could it be more nordic!),Meri Maijala(just sounds happy to me!)but then I discovered this guy.Winner: Jaan Koolmeister

Best Team Performance: Lots of options here the Ukrainian Women’s Relay team, the Russians Men’s relay team for example but I am giving it to a team who have improved significantly on both the Men’s and Women’s side and are not one of the “big” biathlon countries.Winner: Canada

Biggest improver: A difficult category as so many people have done well. I chose the winner because she won 2 European silver medals, got her first TOP 20 finish, is the only woman who represents her country and she funds herself.Winner: Victoria Padial

Best save (from a fall): A difficult one as there were 2 beautiful pirouettes from Martin Fourcade and Tarjei Boe in Hochfilzen but as one was alone and the other in the middle of a group there is only one choice.Winner: Tarjei Boe

Best quote in a press conference: Annecy. Winning on Martin Fourcade’s home patch “it’s not everyday you can beat Martin but it’s cool that I can do it here in his cave in France!” I like that he said it while sitting right next to him!Winner: Johannes Thingnes Boe

Best Twitter follower(of me): Only one winner in this category. He followed me on Twitter without me having to a)follow him b)ask him to do it and c)write a post about him (although this will be fixed in the summer!)Winner: Peter Dokl

Best Tweeter: Easy! Always spots something funny at the tracks or on his travels.Winner: Tobias Arwidson

Best Facebooker: Has to go to the man who shares everything from his holidays to his coffee breaks, from his races to his home town of Mrkopalj(the Croatian tourist board love him and so do we!)Winner: Jakov Fak

Best rifle design: For the Olympics. The Slovenian colours with the mountain design – very cool!Winner: Klemen Bauer
Most ridiculous rifle colour: Literally a shoot out between the Boe brothers. Tarjei with orange, Johannes with gold. You have to have balls to race with a gold rifle and he backed it up with 5 wins and orange does clash with red.Winner: Tarjei Boe

Best ski suit: Standing out from the other teams normal block colour with bit of a stripe here and there. Especially like the leg design incorporating the national flag.Winner: Great Britain

Worst ski suit: Generally for having the same design most years without deviation from red with a splash of black. Nothing wrong with it but needs a change!Winner: Norway

Rising star:Another super difficult category and I almost gave it to several others but getting good results and holding your place in the Norwegian team and winning an Olympic gold and 2 bronze are so hard to do in your first Games. Also replacing Tora Berger isn’t going to be a piece of cake either!Winner: Tiril Eckhoff

Best vocal performance: I know what you are thinking it’s between Soukalova and Bailey, right?WRONG! A man in a dress singing “Breaking The Law” like he was born to do it!Winner: Bjorn Ferry

Luckiest: Some may call it skill and his whole race up to the finish was but the ending was a little bit lucky. Let’s say it’s lucky he didn’t start celebrating gold any earlier in the Olympic Mass Start or he would have given it to Fourcade!Winner:Emil Hegle Svensden

Unluckiest: Falling at the first World Cup round (on a lump of frozen mud while running and not even a skiing injury)and pretty much wrecking her Olypmic hopes. Still it turned out OK in the end with a podium and baby on the way but unlucky in biathlon terms.Winner: Marie Dorin Habert

Biggest disappointment:I wanted this to be the cancellation of the races due to fog and wind but something else got in the way 😦Winner: Biathletes caught doping

Best biathlete blog: Lots of biathletes have blogs these days but because she is retiring and won’t be eligible again as well as it being very good of course I chose this lady.Winner: Sara Studebaker

Best biathlete website: More and more biathletes are getting fancy websites but one of the first I discovered and really liked the entry page(even though he later changed it!)belongs to this guy.Winner: Lukas Hofer

Biathlon23’s performance of the season: A very difficult choice but you can’t look past 3 gold medals in one Olympics creating history for her country.Winner: Darya Domracheva

These are all my own ideas so feel free to Facebook or Tweet me if you have any of your own thoughts! The funnier the better please!

Biathlon23 in true biathlon style is having a little post season break before I get back into writing articles again. But don’t worry like the biathletes I will be back around May with weekly posts to keep you going through the long, barren biathlon free summer!:-)